ABSTRACT
William Shakespeare has become a literary icon with celebrity status, no longer viewed as high culture. When students enter a high school or college classroom, they are most likely familiar with Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 movie version of Romeo + Juliet or the multitude of YouTube videos showcasing appropriations such as the Sassy Gay Friend series (The Second City Network, 2010); however, when they must come face to face with the plays of the Bard himself, it has been Jennifer’s experience as a teacher that most students view them as “archaic,” “irrelevant,” and plainly stated, just “boring.” While these statements may ring true to some readers of Shakespeare, J. L. Styan, one of the first outspoken advocates of performance-based teaching, would suggest that these students just need to be taught in a different way. In a 1980 interview with Derek Peat, Styan asserted:
I can give a lecture, on Twelfth Night say, which brings out all the important points one after another, and the whole thing is over in fifty minutes. However, not one bit of it, not one word of it, will have the same value it would have if the students had discovered it for themselves. The difference is between learning and being told.
(p. 146)